Cheney Rips Obama, Rallies for Romney

Apr 16, 2012

RUSH: Dick Cheney, heart transplant and all, back on stage in Wyoming at a Republican convention or gathering of some kind. He and his daughter Liz are up there on stage. He spoke for an hour and 15 minutes, and the media said, “Without getting tired,” damn it! Well, they didn’t say “Damn it!” I added that in there because I know that’s what they think. It was in Cheyenne. It was a Republican state convention. Here is the vice president…

CHENEY: I can’t think of a time when I felt it was more important for us to defeat an incumbent president than today with respect to Barack Obama. I think he has been an unmitigated disaster for the country. To be in a position where he gets four more years in the White House to continue the policies he has — both with respect to the economy and tax policy and defense and then so many other areas — would be a huge, huge disappointment.

RUSH: Yeah. It would be worse than that. But he was being politic. It would be a disaster, like he said the first time: “an unmitigated disaster” continued. So you can always count on Dick Cheney. Fearless, just right in there. And he said this about Romney…

CHENEY: I think it’s very important that we get together and gather together and get behind our likely nominee. It’s Mitt Romney. I’ve known him for a long time. I’ve got a lot of confidence in him.

RUSH: Speaking of Mitt Romney, Byron York posted at the blog, Beltway Confidential this morning, “At a closed-to-the-press Florida fundraiser Sunday night…” By the way, folks, I know where this thing took place ’cause I was asked to go. I shot 78 Saturday in a member-member tournament. I had five birdies! I had too many double bogeys or I’d have shot even better. I had five birdies. One of the birdies was a chip-in ten feet off the green, but the other four birdies I didn’t sink long putts. My approach shots were within four or five feet and I sunk those putts. But I mean, I was striping it! I changed my stance but I used what I learned.

I sent Hank Haney a note: “Hank, I just shot a real 78 here!” It was a tournament; everything counts. None of this trickery. No gimme putts or any of that like when you’re just horsing around. He wrote back, “That’s the greatest news I’ve had all week.” So, anyway, the guy who hosted the thing was playing in the tournament on Saturday, and I can’t go to these things. It was $50,000. As a powerful, influential member of the media, I don’t go to fundraisers or contribute to ’em. (interruption) No, no, no! It’s not that the price was too high. I’m telling you what the price was. It was the largest one. It was $3 million-plus they raised with 90-something people.

It was 50 grand to get in there. Anyway, I know the guy and his wife that hosted the thing. They’re nice people, Jerry Jordan and his wife. His wife has worked for Romney for a long time. Anyway, anyway, the point is here I shot 78 — and I didn’t know it until the round was over! (interruption) No, I wasn’t in the zone. I was just caught up in the score of the tournament, how the team was doing. It was two-man best ball. It was a member-member tournament. I didn’t figure I was that good. I thought I was gonna be close to 80 but I thought I had too many double bogeys to be under 80, but I had forgotten to count the impact of the five birdies.

In fact, three of the birdies happened the first five holes. I mean I was striping the damn thing. At any rate, at a closed-to-the-press Florida fundraiser Sunday night here in Palm Beach at which his remarks were overheard by some reporters standing outside, Romney was asked about his media strategery for the general election campaign. And, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and PMSNBC, Romney said his campaign’s been treated well by Fox News but that he needs to expand his audience beyond Fox. He said, “Fox is watched by the true believers. We need to get the independents and the women.”

We need to move beyond Fox’s true believers, Romney said. Now, that may well be the case. That’s standard procedure, by the way, you secure the nomination with the so-called base, but that’s not what Romney’s done.

Romney has not secured this with the Republican base, with the conservatives. The Republican establishment kicked this whole primary off wanting to secure the nomination for a moderate with moderate votes from the get-go. They wanted to deemphasize the conservative vote, and they lucked out with so many conservatives running that the conservative vote throughout all those early primaries was split seven or eight different ways. A good friend of mine heard about this and said, “What do you mean, ‘Time to move beyond Fox’s true believers’? He hasn’t hit the true believers yet.” I mean, there’s some real — not felt by me — some real animosity out there and that’s why Cheney is saying it’s time to unify. It’s time for everybody to get together now.

You know, it would help if Romney would reach out to Santorum and get Santorum. It would help if Romney would reach out to Mr. Newt. The whole unity thing. I don’t know if it’s gonna happen. Don’t ask me. I suspect that it will ’cause I think when we get to the point where the pedal hits the metal, when the rubber hits the road, I think the whole specter of Obama will be a unifying characteristic or aspect of the campaign. But who said that before, about having to widen the base beyond conservatives? Somebody said that. Who said, “You gotta widen the base beyond conservatives”? Some establishment guy.

So there’s a way to say this. But to move beyond Fox’s true believers? “True believers” is not a complimentary characterization, would you say? Or is it? True believers, I guess you could go either way on it.